Self-Publishing is a Great and Easy way to Get Rich--NOT!

I stumbled across a blog stating that it is easy to self-publish and make $2000 per month. This person said he realized that was not a lot, but he was continuing to build his income.  People  were excited and probably out buying his whole collection of get-rich quick through gigs schemes. 

Self-publishing is easy. You  write something (or easier still--hire something to be written), and upload it to Amazon. Then sit back and collect the cash. The problem is that just as some people are not cut out to be parents (and others can easily juggle 12 children), some people can write books and some people cannot. Yes, I know, your 9th grade English teacher said you are an amazing writer and you even won a writing award. My 9th grade writing work is awful, in my opinion. I am not going to rip it up, but I won't be posting it any time soon. I wrote like a 9th grader. Terribly. It has taken years of reading piles of books and four college courses to hone my writing to the place where it is today. Even then, I would still love to get my MFA in creative writing (and yes, my college instructors told me I had enough talent that I should try to do this).

As I have said many times before, anyone CAN write in America because we are taught to write. But there is a refining process that goes beyond just writing that is required in order to have other people read your work and like it. Harper Lee was a great writer, but it took 2 years and drastic revisions to get To Kill a Mockingbird. It took the input of a competent editor. In order to sell all those copies and become mandatory reading in most high schools, it took massive publicity campaigns undertaken by a traditional publishing company. Her book had to meet the requirements for and be entered into legitimate contests so she could then win those contests. It had to be nominated for awards so she could win those awards. It had to have copies sent to the right newspapers and magazines so the editors and writers could read it and print things about it--now these editors and writers get millions of books each year, so anything you or I send is likely to get swept off with masses of other books into the circular bin to make room for those books sent by bigger names. A single person does not have the resources to do what a traditional publishing company does. 

So, you write a book, put it out, sell it for free, become an "Amazon bestseller" and make $50 off it when you finally sell it for money--if you can get descent reviews from people whom you have not paid. Then you start getting some negative reviews because of editing typos (or worse poorly constructed material), and there goes your chances of making it big off that one. And you will have typos--everyone does. If you only have a few, you might not affect your sales, but the number of typos in your final work depends on two factors--(1) your level of grammar knowledge (or the level of grammar knowledge that the person you paid to edit it has) and how well you (or the editor) knows the style manual you are following to clean it up and (2)how many times it has been edited.

So your first book made you $50 before your sales dropped of, so you write another. 

At some point, you may hire someone else to write it or edit it or market it. Then you might make a little more off the books, but now you are also losing money because you have to pay someone to do all this. If you pay someone who doesn't know what he or she is doing, you still get the bad reviews and lose even more money. Paying someone who does know what to do in each of these steps can cost you thousands of dollars. 

I don't want to discourage you from the process, but I want you to go into it with open eyes. It takes a long time to build up enough books and publicity to support yourself. It is difficult to get people to review your book even if you give it away. It is difficult to make no money and still keep repeating the process until you do. Successfully self-publishing a book is in fact just as hard as trying to find a traditional publisher to publish a well-written book.

Self-publishing has been sold to the public as a cheap work around to traditional publishing (as opposed to the expensive work around of vanity press publishing). The truth is that you have to have just as much backbone to self-publish as you do to traditionally publish. Each book you put out that doesn't do well, is like a rejection letter from a traditional publisher except instead of getting one letter, you get five or ten 1-star or "I wish I could give 0 stars" reviews that detail why they hate your work--even if the work itself is good. Publishers usually just send you a short and sweet form letter. In some cases, it is obvious why you were rejected--poor writing, poor editing, poor formatting. In others where you get no reviews and few sales, it is simply that you don't have enough resources to market it to the right audience. 

So what about the guy who is making $2000 per month? He openly admits he had to build his "business." He is also selling get-rich quick books, he has a rather large online presence, and he is getting that money from multiple books. He is successful because he can use one advertising campaign to support all his "gigs." That means he can spend a lot of money but when he looks at how much is being spent per "gig" it doesn't seem like much. He also is probably paying people to do his writing for him because when you have your finger in so many pots, it is hard to find the time to stir all of them yourself. The bottom line is that if you want to make money, you have to have money.